Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Salad

Sorry for the delay in updates. Here are two for this week and last.
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The first salads that I recall from the days when I was growing up in the UK, were main course cold meals, usually consisting of lettuce, tomato, and "salad cream" (a poor relation of mayonnaise) with cold meat such as chicken, tongue, or ham.
I long ago realized that cafes offered salad as a first course, to be eaten while the main course was being prepared to order. These side salads always included some tomato and lettuce (usually of the rather boring iceberg variety).
When salad is served in France, it is usually a separate course that follows the main dish. Barbara and I like this custom, especially because I deplore helping myself to salad to put on a warm and possibly greasy plate. This causes some confusion to visitors who tend to want to add the salad to the cooked vegetables on their plates.
We are very fortunate these days in being able to make a salad with lettuce or arugula grown in our Berkeley backyard. Our salads usually include some celery, bell peppers, cucumber, radish, green onions, and avocado. We serve this with the best croutons we have come across (Semifreddi's) and feta cheese. I find these salads so delicious that I will often skip cookie, cake, or ice cream to follow.